“I can’t undo it,” he said. “Can’t give you back those years. Can’t un-break the things I broke.”
“I know.”
“But I can promise you I’m coming back.”
He brushed his thumbs across my cheekbones with a tenderness that made my chest ache.
“Don’t just come back. You technically came back from that last deployment.” The words came out before I could second-guess them. “I want you to promise me that whatever you have to become with Oliver, whatever you have to do to survive it—don’t disappear on me. Don’t decide you’re protecting me by walking away.”
“I won’t.” The fierceness in his voice stopped me short. “Mia, I swear to you. I’m coming back, completely and fully. And when this is over, I’m not leaving again. Not ever.”
I wanted to believe him. Wanted it so badly that the wanting was its own kind of ache.
So I chose to. Felt the decision settle into my bones like something clicking into place. Not blind faith—I’d learned better than that. But deliberate trust. The kind you offered someone with your eyes open, knowing they could hurt you, choosing to be vulnerable anyway.
He kissed me then. Soft at first, almost tentative, like he was asking permission. I answered by threading my fingers through his hair and pulling him closer.
The kiss deepened slowly. None of the desperation from before, none of the urgency that had driven us together in the cabin while the storm raged and the cameras were blind. This was something different. Something unhurried.
He moved his hands down my body, tracing the curve of my shoulder, the dip of my waist, the flare of my hip. Every touch deliberate. Intentional. Like he was learning me all over again, cataloging each response—the hitch in my breath when his thumb brushed the sensitive skin below my ribs, the way I arched into him when his palm flattened against my lower back.
I pulled at his shirt and he helped me remove it, then did the same with mine. The rest followed. Skin against skin, warmth spreading everywhere we touched.
“Look at me,” he said as he eased me back against the pillows.
I did. Held his gaze as he settled over me, his weight braced on his forearms. Even in the predawn shadows, I could see his eyes—the blue gone dark and intent, fixed on mine like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
He entered me slowly. So slowly it was almost unbearable, each shift of his body a question and an answer at once. My hands mapped the terrain of his back, feeling muscles flex and release beneath my palms, the ridged texture of old scars under my fingertips.
“Stay with me,” he murmured against my throat. Not a command. A request.
“I’m here.” I pulled his face up to mine, needing to see his eyes again. “I’m right here.”
We moved together in the half-light, finding a rhythm that felt less like something we created and more like something weremembered. Something that had been waiting for us all along, patient through six years of separation and silence.
When he said my name, it sounded like a prayer.
When I said his, it sounded like coming home.
Afterward, we lay tangled together, my head on his chest and his arm curved around my waist. Sleep came in fragments—drifting off for minutes at a time, then surfacing to reassure myself he was still there. Each time I woke, he would move his hand against my back, a wordless confirmation.
Morning crept in slowly. Low light filtering through the windows, washing the room in colorless dawn. I watched it spread across the ceiling, across the walls of this house I’d only just started to learn.
Neither of us pretended those fragments of sleep had been enough.
Coop stirred first, pressing a kiss to my hair before easing out of bed. I watched him move through the dim room, gathering clothes with the efficiency of someone who’d learned to pack fast and travel light. His movements were different now. Sharper. More controlled.
Like last night, he was once again becoming someone else.
I sat up, pulling the sheet around myself, and watched him pull out the clothes he’d wear back to Oliver’s world. Rougher fabrics. Darker colors. Nothing like the soft flannel shirts he wore here.
“Let me help.”
He looked over at me, something flickering across his face—gratitude, maybe, or something softer that he didn’t have words for.
I crossed the room and took one of the shirts from his hands. A dark Henley, worn soft from use. I folded it carefully, my fingers lingering on the fabric longer than necessary. Smoothing out wrinkles that weren’t there. Finding excuses to touchsomething he’d be wearing, like I could send some part of myself with him.
“You’re going to be okay,” I said. Not a question. A statement. Something I needed to say out loud to make it true.
